Berlin: For the first time, after a long wait, the Central Mosque of Cologne in Germany, raised the call to prayer over loudspeakers on Friday, October 14, 2022.
The German city of Cologne allowed the largest mosque in Germany to raise the call to prayer for Friday prayers through loudspeakers, after an agreement between the city and the Muslim community to ease restrictions.
The call to prayer, known in Arabic as the Azan or Adhan, will be carried out under a two-year pilot project.
Under the agreement, about 35 mosques in Cologne will be allowed to call the call to prayer for up to five minutes on Fridays between noon and 3pm.
The condition of not disturbing the neighbors and not exceeding the sound level of 60 decibels at a distance of 100 metres will also be observed.
The project was initiated by Henriette Reeker, the mayor of Cologne, who previously said that “allowing the muezzin to call is for me a sign of respect”.
Cologne Central Mosque opened in 2018 with the support of the Organization of the Islamic Community and the Turkish-Islamic European Union, and its opening was criticized for its direct links with Turkey and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
About 100,000 Muslims of different origins live in Cologne.
As per media reports, in the year 2018, German court ordered mosques’ to stop broadcasting its weekly call to prayer after the complaint of a Christian couple who live about a kilometer (0.6 miles) away.
The couple in the town of Oer-Erkenschwick, near Dortmund, said the muezzin’s call violated their religious rights.
Although it was allowed in the capital, Berlin, in 2020 to raise the call to prayer during the period of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic to raise the morale of citizens, the authorities decided at a later time to ban the call to prayer on the pretext of not praying in mosques.
What is Azan/Adhan?
The call to prayer, known as Azan or Adhan, is issued by mosques five times a day. The call is sung by the muezzin, whose chief role is the call to prayer. The call summons Muslims to prayer as well as communicating a summary of Islamic beliefs.